The distribution and processing of information have been revolutionized by the use of computers connected to a network. At first, the networks were small and contained within a local area. These small networks were called local area networks (“LANs”) LANs allowed small numbers of users to efficiently distribute information and files among each of the computers connected to the LAN. Soon thereafter, several LANs were connected together forming a wide area network (“WAN”). WANs allowed users to exchange information across networks located in different geographic areas. Currently, one of the largest computer networks is the Internet.
The Internet is a worldwide interconnection of computer networks that communicate using a common protocol and allows millions of computers from low-end personal computers to high-end super computers to communicate with each other. The Internet was conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (“ARPA”) of the U.S. government in the 1960s and was first known as the “ARPANet.” The original aim of ARPA was to create a network that would allow users of a research computer at one university to be able to “talk to” research computers located at other universities. A side benefit of ARPANet's design was that, because messages could be routed or rerouted in more than one direction throughout the network, the network could continue to function even if parts of the network were destroyed in the event of a military attack or other disaster.
As the usage of the Internet expanded outside of the academic/research community and into the corporate community, the Internet became a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Physically, the Internet uses a portion of the total resource of the currently existing public telecommunication networks. Technically, what distinguishes the Internet is its use of a set of protocols called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (“TCP/IP”). Two recent adaptations of Internet technology, “intranets” and “extranets,” also make use of the TCP/IP protocol.
For many Internet users, electronic mail (“e-mail”) has practically replaced the United States Postal Service for short written transactions and is the most widely used application on the Internet. The Internet can distribute electronic embodiments of textbooks, magazines, advertisements and audio and video clips around the world. Using the Internet's Internet Relay Chat (“IRC”), a person on one computer system can have live “conversations” with other computer users connected to the Internet. More recently, Internet telephony hardware and software allow real-time voice conversations (also called “voice over IP”).
One of the most rapidly expanding aspects of the Internet is the World Wide Web (the “Web”). The Web consists of computers (servers and clients) that are able to support a common Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”). HTTP is the set of rules for exchanging files, such as text, graphic images, sound, video and other multimedia files on the Web. Relative to the TCP/IP suite of protocols (which are the basis for information exchange on the Internet), HTTP is an application protocol.
The Web also allows documents and graphical material to be interlinked by means of “hypertext” elements or tags. In most Web sites, hypertext words or phrases appear in text of a different color than the rest of the text and are often underlined. Hypertext elements can also be buttons, graphical images, or portions of the graphical images and causes the pointer on the screen to change into a hand when the pointer is over the hypertext element. When a user selects a hypertext word, phrase or graphical image, a related document, identified by the hypertext link, will automatically be retrieved and processed. Commonly, hypertext elements are used to change pages on a Web site or to change Web sites.
Typically, most Web sites are accessed using a Web browser such as Netscape's Navigator™. The appearance of a particular Web site may vary slightly depending on the Web browser used. Also, Web browsers have the ability for animation, virtual reality and sound.
The Web is also very useful for allowing users to conduct business no matter where the user is located. The business Web sites allow users to subscribe to services, purchase items and retrieve information. One such business that can be facilitated via a computer system such as the Web is related to the sales and marketing field and, in particular, the collection of market data.
In the past, various systems and methods have been used to collect market survey data. One method is the mall intercept, wherein a number of interviewers are placed in various locations in a shopping mall and are tasked with intercepting potential respondents. Each respondent may, in a preliminary screening, be asked a series of basic screening questions to determine whether the respondent qualifies for the particular survey that the interviewer is attempting to complete. If a respondent does not qualify for the survey, the respondent is dismissed and the interviewer seeks out a new respondent. If the respondent does qualify, the interviewer may then proceed to ask the respondent the survey questions or have the respondent take the survey.
The mall intercept method has a number of deficiencies. It may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the interviewer to screen respondents for possible qualification in multiple surveys. The interviewer is thus generally limited to screening for one survey at a time.
Further, the screening may be dependent, to a large extent, on an individual interviewer and, as a result, may be subject to the individual interviewer's subjective biases. Take, for example, a survey that requires respondents to be of a certain age group. The interviewer may make incorrect assumptions about the age of certain potential respondents and, therefore, may not ask the respondent to participate in the preliminary screening. By prematurely eliminating potential respondents, the interviewer may bias the survey, since only respondents whose physical appearance, in the interviewer's opinion, places them in the age group will even be approached by the interviewer.
Another method of collecting market surveying data is the telephone method. An interviewer may manually dial a potential respondent on the telephone or the telephone may be automatically dialed by an automated telephone system. Similar to the mall intercept method, the interviewer then performs a preliminary screening, asking the respondent a series of basic screening questions to determine whether the respondent qualifies for the particular survey that the interviewer is attempting to complete. If a respondent does not qualify for the survey, the respondent is dismissed and the interviewer seeks out a new respondent. If the respondent does qualify, the interviewer may then proceed to ask the respondent the survey questions.
The telephone method may reduce the effects of interviewer bias, since the interviewer will typically not be able to make a judgment as to the respondent's qualifications based on physical appearance. The telephone method, however, still suffers from some of the same deficiencies as the mall intercept method, namely, that it may be impractical to screen the same respondent for possible participation in multiple surveys.
Panel-based methods are yet another way to collect market survey data. Researchers may employ e-mail to recruit a panel. The e-mail addresses may be obtained from a list provided by a client or, for example, from a database containing e-mail addresses and basic demographic data pertaining to the e-mail addresses. In a typical e-mail-based panel screening and survey selection system, a list of potential respondents may be developed based on the demographic requirements of a particular survey. The respondents are then sent invitations via e-mail to participate in the survey. Since the e-mail addresses are generally generated in response to the demographic requirements of a particular survey, the respondents are necessarily limited to participation in that particular survey.
E-mail-based panels also suffer from a number of deficiencies. For example, a respondent may have been interested in participating in surveys at the time the database was compiled, but is no longer interested in participating by the time the e-mail notice is sent. The system may attempt to compensate by sending invitations to a greater number of respondents than required by the survey. However, this leads to the possibility that more respondents will participate than is actually required. Another problem that exists with e-mail-based systems is that a single respondent may have multiple e-mail addresses and may therefore participate in the same survey multiple times.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a computer network based screening and survey selection system that overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art.